Iran International
An airstrike on a civilian lodging complex in Shiraz in the early days of the Iran war likely targeted IRGC personnel sheltering inside rather than a nearby military base, killing nine civilians at an adjacent emergency center, an Iran International investigation found.
The March 5 strike hit several buildings inside the Zibashahr emergency lodging complex, where members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated forces had taken shelter during the war, according to images from the site, open-source data, Iranian media reports, witness accounts and an expert assessment reviewed by Iran International.
The evidence suggests the strike was not a simple miss aimed at a nearby IRGC facility, but an attack on the lodging complex itself.
The site sat inside a civilian area, beside a local ambulance station that is part of Iran’s 115 emergency medical service, as well as service buildings and residential homes.
No party has claimed responsibility for the strike.
Fars provincial authorities later said 20 people had been killed and 30 wounded. At an official memorial ceremony in Zibashahr, however, only 16 names and photographs were released: seven IRGC and Basij members and nine civilians.
The civilians included two emergency technicians, a health worker, municipal employees and contractors, and a local shopkeeper.
The strike destroyed the ambulance station, a neighboring building and a larger structure to the east that formed part of the municipal emergency lodging complex. Nearby residential buildings were also damaged.
Why the lodging complex was hit
The large destroyed building inside the Zibashahr complex was not an empty passenger facility or an unidentified structure.
The Student News Agency, linked to the Student Basij, published a video report from the site after the attack and said missiles had hit “dormitory and administrative buildings” in the complex. It also reported that military personnel had been killed and wounded.
The agency said the personnel were there for “training courses for border protection.”
But public mapping services, including Google Maps and the Iranian app Neshan, identify the site as an emergency lodging complex, not a military training facility.
Verified images and videos from the area also show the lodging complex sign at the entrance. Iran International found no publicly available evidence that the site had previously functioned as a military training center.
Less than 200 meters away, across the highway, sits a large IRGC Ground Forces training and military complex. Open-source mapping also links the area to the IRGC’s 19th Fajr Division and an IRGC Aerospace Force unit in Shiraz. One officer killed in the Zibashahr strike was linked to the 19th Fajr Division.
Yet post-strike imagery showed no sign that the nearby IRGC complex itself had been destroyed.
That pattern is central to the investigation. If the intended target had been the formal IRGC facility, a miss of about 200 meters across the highway would have to explain several impacts on separate buildings inside the civilian lodging complex.
Wes Bryant, a former head of a US Air Force special targeting team and former Pentagon civilian-casualty assessment official, reviewed visual evidence from the site.
He assessed that the strike involved about 1,350 kilograms of munitions, including a weapon comparable to a 900-kilogram bomb against the larger eastern building and smaller munitions, comparable to 220-kilogram bombs, against two western structures, including the ambulance station.
With modern precision-guided munitions, Bryant said, a 200-meter error across a highway would be highly unlikely, particularly in several separate impacts.
His assessment supports the conclusion drawn from the other evidence: the lodging complex itself, or specific buildings inside it, was the likely target.
A target among civilians
The evidence reviewed by Iran International points to a strike on a civilian lodging complex after IRGC personnel moved into it during the war.
That may explain why the Zibashahr complex, rather than the nearby formal IRGC facility, was hit. But the same evidence also shows that the targeted buildings stood inside a civilian setting, beside an ambulance station and near residential homes.
That leaves responsibility on the Iranian side.
By moving or allowing military personnel to shelter in a civilian lodging complex, next to an emergency medical site and homes, Iranian authorities placed civilians and medical workers in the path of a foreseeable strike.
It is not necessary to prove that civilians were intentionally used as shields to establish the consequence: the risk of war was shifted from a military facility into a place used by civilians.
That responsibility does not remove the attacker’s obligations.
Even if the presence of IRGC personnel made part of the lodging complex a military target, it did not automatically strip the neighboring ambulance station, surrounding buildings or nearby homes of protection.
A medical site loses its special protection only if it is itself used for acts harmful to the enemy; Iran International found no evidence in the material reviewed that the ambulance station was used in that way.
The strike therefore leaves two central facts in tension.
IRGC personnel appear to have taken shelter among civilians, turning part of the complex into a target. But the attack also destroyed an ambulance station and killed civilians in an area whose medical and residential character was visible in public maps and imagery.
In Zibashahr, the war moved from a military complex into a lodging site, an ambulance station and people’s homes.
